Saturday, 1 February 2014

Kenneth Stewart's Restoring the Reformation - a very brief review

Kenneth J. Stewart poses and answers the question: did the British evangelicals ‘restore the Reformation’ in Francophone Europe? He examines the role of the British in the Reveil movement that started in Geneva.

The consensus has been that Robert Haldane was the catalyst for this revival. This stems largely from the “tendentious” biography by his nephew Live of the Haldanes. The Scot Haldane visited Geneva in 1816-17, it seems he was under the impression that Geneva and the continent was almost devoid of evangelicals. Stewart shows that this was largely unfounded.

Haldane’s legacy included the mentoring of a number of young theological students and passed on to them his separatist and restorationist ideas.